Latest posts
Issue 01 - Nationalism and identities in Europe
Our first issue explores the shifty ground of nationalism and identities in Europe. Flags, sports and politics feature heavily as symbols of national expression, as we comment on Montenegrin independence and European success in the Ryder Cup.
Issue 02 - Europe & Frontières
Fifty years ago, six European countries created a zone of cooperation that cut across the territorial divisions of the past. Since then, bridges have been replacing barriers, as former neighbours have become partners - for better or for worse. But bo...
Issue 03 - Religions in Europe
He was no Nostradamus, but former French minister for culture André Malraux was famously credited with the following prediction: 'the 21st century will be spiritual if there ever is one'. Seven years into the Millennium and six years after the tragi...
Issue 04 - Europe 2057
If one had asked the EU's founding fathers to draw a picture of Europe in 2007, it would probably have featured square-jawed robots and imposing computers, in a city looking like one giant, ultra-modern factory. To mark the end of the EU's 50th anniv...
Issue 05 - Can Europe save the Earth?
This fifth issue of SHIFT Mag marks the first anniversary of our magazine. To celebrate our sustainability, we've put together an exciting issue on what Europeans and others can do to save the planet. We all have a bit of waking up to do. What you'll...
Issue 06 - Sport in Europe: profit or value?
“Faster, higher, stronger”, “the most important is not winning but taking part”… Aren’t these two messages a little confusing ? The sixth issue of Shiftmag aims to address this tension.
Issue 07 - Europe by the rest of the world
On 19 November 2008, Kosovar authorities arrested three German nationals for the alleged bombing of the office of the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) in Kosovo, Pieter Feith. One of the Germans apparently threw an explosive device at the...
Issue 09 - Can Europe be social?
Common problems call for common solutions. The question is: are we serious about making Europe an area of free movement, peace and prosperity? If not, let us retreat to our national backyards and weather the global storms individually as brave nation...
Issue 08 - Knowledge, research and society
What place do knowledge and research hold in our society? Are we getting any closer to becoming the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world? In this issue we talk about success stories like Erasmus, and cases where the jury is still out...
Issue 11 - Europe in the mirror
One of those tongue-in-cheek postcards you can buy nearly everywhere in Brussels illustrates how “the perfect European should drive like the French, be as chatty as the Finns and as witty as the Germans”. But what is really behind such stereotype...
Issue 10 - Democracy in Europe
Born in Greece, raised in Westminster, let loose in the streets of Paris, Prague and Berlin… democracy is perhaps Europe’s most important contribution to the world. So why is today’s EU still desperately trying to add the D-word to its vocabula...
Issue 13 - Europe Idols
The European hall of fame is too often reduced to its most visible stars. Sometimes Europe’s audiences tend to look to America. But Europe’s internal borders hide many artists, sportsmen and women, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and opinion leader...
Issue 12 - Europe in doubt
Euroscepticism, i.e. criticism, doubt and opposition towards the European Union, has attracted much attention over the last decade. But oppositions to the European project are as old as the project itself. The novelty though, resides not so much in t...
Issue 14 - Next destination: Europe
Everyday “THE” revolution of this or that is announced. The first to carry it out gives way to another faster, stronger and more inventive revolutionary. Pioneering in the 21st century: what does it mean? Innovating or simply reinventing the whee...
Copenhagen 2009 - Are we looking on the black side of things?
Three months ago the “failure of Copenhagen” was on everyone’s lips. Hopers and dreamers were few. In retrospect who was right? Did we expect too much from Obama – him again – China and developing countries? Between utopia and scepticism ti...
Born in the "U.S.E"
Shifting with Guy Verhofstadt... Interview with the politician which Belgium now envies Europe.
EU-27: neither hell nor heaven
Does Ode to Joy still echo from Tallinn to Sofia? But maybe the right question should be: has it ever done so since the enlargement of the European Union (EU) to Eastern Europe? Except among the elites, enthusiasm for the 2004 and 2007 enlargements w...
1989-2009: twenty years after in Poland
As everyone knows, the fall of the Berlin Wall took place 20 years ago. To mark this occasion, a group of Polish students visited the “Institute for European Studies/Institut d’études européennes” in Brussels last November to relate their per...
The other side of the coin
There is a Swedish expression that goes “down on the Continent”. This feeling of “us and them” lies at the heart of the apparent concern currently being felt in Sweden about the euro.
